A Question For AGW Denialists, Ctd

Your correspondent claims the group of
scientists who have produced work supporting the climate change theory
is quite small. He seems oblivious to the fact that there are
thousands of members of the American Meteorological Society who've
studied the theory. Classes at hundreds of campuses in the US alone
are examining facets of the theory, and there are more faculty
members studying climate at many individual state universities than the
total number of denialists actually working in the field.

The list
of academics in the sciences bandied about by the deniers has 60-70
people, but anyone who actually looks at it realizes it includes 15-20
emeritus professors, 15-20 political scientists and other irrelevant
academics; the remainder are mostly geologists, not climate scientists,
and they don't come close to agreeing what their complaint with
the theory is - some continue to deny warming; others deny the
anthropogenic causes, and no one lets on that the two positions are
incompatible.

There are words in biology for groups of animals - a pride of
lions and so on. In climate science, the word for scientists who don't
believe the theory of anthropogenic climate change is "a smidgen of
denialists". The numbers are so small that they should greater
anthropological curiosity - how did these people arrive at such wildly
varying views? - than curiosity about the truth of anthropogenic
warming.

Giving this anonymous person the opportunity to spread a whole new
set of lies about climate science, unrebutted, is committing the
same error that has put us in this situation in the first place. I
have no problem with differing opinions. Someone knowledgeable enough
to admit "huge numbers of working scientists are examining this
question, and they feel the science is decided, but I and several
others like me don't" would be fine. But the denialists out themselves
when they proclaim there is no broad consensus, or that only a few
scientists are on the other side. The assertion is so patently false
that anyone making it has shown they don't have enough familiarity with
the question, or enough integrity, to be listened to.

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